Maps of various kinds

I'd go for a nice paperback book, artwork, maps, and lore about the areas sold by VR...

I like that idea. Earn a bit of extra revenue as long as shipping internationally is reasonable. I would prefer only ingame world map, so you can see zone names, where they are in relation to each other. (Someone would otherwise create it anyway)

No different to a map of a country in an Atlas type thing.

For detailed zone maps, an out of game map. Either as suggested above or like EQAtlas did. You still couldn't just press M and see exactly where you were.

You had to look at a map and then try and find where you were in relation to things. Just like when you go hiking with a detailed map and compass.

I remember printing them all out and running through zones trying to spot markers to know where I was or use /loc and then work out my spot on the map.

Had to stop every time to work things out, not just looking at a onscreen map with exact location on it or mini map of the zone.

Even if maps dont make it into the game there are tons of free map making tools you can download on the internet now. Some of them are very nice and detailed. Im sure there will be another alakhazams(spelling?) for pantheon.

If there is one in-game it can be presented in an immersive and (dev) controlled way.

If it is left to Wikis and other sites it will be instantly immersion breaking (ALT-Tab to your desktop photo of the kids and a website covered in adverts) and will likely show spoilers you didn't want or need.

Please, VR, I beg of you, do your own mapping system. Most people will not bother going outside the game, if it's good enough.

The potential for it being something special also, with all the suggestions of perception integration, cartography crafting, orienteering skills, magical maps, mapping spells, treasure maps, etc. etc. surely there's some level greater then 'none' justified by cost-benefit?

A fleshed out cartography system makes too much sense for a game like Pantheon, in my opinion. I know there is another MMO being developed that is planning to implement their own version of cartography but I think VR could knock this feature out the park. That said, I believe that resources are a consideration and there isn't really anything we can do about that right now other than continue to spread the word and raise awareness for this game.

I think it would be pretty cool if Cartography was an actual skill, like a tradecraft. It would require resources like parchments and inks that could require other trades or components. Characters with Cartography skill could draw maps while they move around areas, but the quality of the layers on the map would depend on the Cartography skill.

It would seem like a cool perk would be the ability to annotate and sell high quality maps to other players, but that immediately seems like something that would virtually invalidate the skill for 99% of the playerbase because a handful of Cartographers would corner the market with the highest quality maps for the lowest price. Well, maybe not if there isn't a serverwide/gamewide bazaar/auction feature to the game, and Cartographers would have to sell their copies in the EC/NRo tunnel.

I really love Cartography and mapping out oldschool RPG games. I also sometimes love when in-game maps work like Google maps with zooming in and out and it being a highly detailed representation of the world and not just sketches of triangles for mountains that leads you to believe there's a mountain pass somewhere that ends up just being a mountainous texture file on an incline too steep for a character to run up, causing you to curse the map. I think the hand-drawn maps are much more immersive in a fantasy world without satellites though. That being said however I thought the map in Rift was awesome with the Rift Invasion events showing up on the map like a WW2 strategy table with the pieces on the board and the arrows of enemy movements etc. I would prefer a rudimentary map that was just ugly lines at first, scaled up with several layers that made it look better (based on Cartography skill) to the highest quality maps being accurate and informative hand-drawn style representations. I do still agree through with one of the earliest posts in this thread - the maps in this medieval high fantasy magical world should not include your position like your compass has a GPS beacon linked to your map via BlueTooth constantly syncing your coordinates and direction. If you're lucky enough to have a map you can pull from your pack and unroll, it shouldn't be a mall kiosk with a YOU ARE HERE (red arrow).

EDIT: I do admit that no in-game maps is great for players learning zones, and zones that you don't learn keep their air of magic and wonder. For immersion, no maps might still be best. I thought Emerald Jungle / Trakanon's Teeth were insanely massive and terrifying 'ntil I just sat down with a map one day while playing and got a more accurate sense of distance between the landmarks. It was like revealing to a child a hidden pocket in a magician's sleeve. Also, I remember trying to explain crossing Siren's Grotto using images of maps, which usually ended with me just getting a port to Skyshrine and running across Cobalt Scar to show them how to get across in person. Unless they cheated and got an evac right before I got there, rendering my trip a waste of time and almost ensuring I would have to repeat it at a later date 'cause they still hadn't learned anything. Good times. ;)

A fleshed out cartography system makes too much sense for a game like Pantheon, in my opinion. I know there is another MMO being developed that is planning to implement their own version of cartography but I think VR could knock this feature out the park. That said, I believe that resources are a consideration and there isn't really anything we can do about that right now other than continue to spread the word and raise awareness for this game.

I'm against in-game maps, but at this point it's common knowledge that there will maps for everything offered online. So I think it would make sense to go ahead and add something like cartography. No GPS or any of that though.

I'm sure there have been lots of ideas thrown around in the thread, probably several similar (or almost exactly) like the one I'm going to propose... but by jolly I'm going to lay it out anyways.

So, knowing that people can and will access external maps,maybe allow everyone to have access to the cartography skill? However, the kicker is that it cannot be higher than your main crafting profession. So if you want to raise cartography you have to raise your primary crafting skill first. Materials for maps should also be expensive, increasingly so (requiring higher quality vellum, for example) as the cartographer moves from one skill range to the next (1-10, 10 being the most expensive maps to make). Noob zones will be 1 in difficulty, raid zones and level 50ish zones will be 10.

Zones will be ranked by difficulty, and the cartographer can only attempt to make maps of zones that are within his/her skill range. Some zones will be too high for the cartographer to attempt, meaning the cartographer will always fail, wasting expensive vellum and ink (and valuable time?). And even maps within their range may be very difficult in terms of producing a perfect map. If an attempt at making the map is successful, perhaps there can be imperfections (one or more "smudged" areas). If the attempt fails, the vellum is lost.

So why make maps? Players start with a MAPS book (like the Spellbook) that is blank when they enter the world. Players may purchase maps from ther players and permanently add them to their MAPS book. The map is then consumed. In the case of smudges and such, allow maps to be overrided by adding the same zone map (replace crappy smudgy maps with better maps). Once the cartography skill is mastered, a cartographer can begin creating maps with text, which will label dungeon entrances, zone lines, cities and villages, etc... All maps created by non-masters have ZERO (or very limited) text.

Additionally, perhaps allow maxed cartographers a chance to create "special" or "magical" maps. I'm definitely open to ideas here, but I was thinking along the lines of killing a particular mob (the map marked with an X in the general area) will unearth a treasure chest that might have some coin, crafting materials, and/or random items that may or may not have any value? Just throwing out ideas at this point, but it would be cool if the skill had something extra.

Opening the map book wouldn't be any more immersion-breaking than opening your spellbook, and there wouldn't be any significant need for external sites as people begin to acquire desired maps.

@Kaen -- I proposed a cartography system on page 8 if you care to take a look. It's very similar to what you and AevicNij have described. It isn't completely fleshed out but there is enough of a base there to build off of. I can live with or without maps but the way I look at it, if the demand is there and they do ultimately end up being considered, it would be ideal to implement them in a way that coincides with the game tenets and overall emphasis on exploration, social interaction, player driven economy, etc.

@Kaen -- I proposed a cartography system on page 8 if you care to take a look. It's very similar to what you and AevicNij have described. It isn't completely fleshed out but there is enough of a base there to build off of. I can live with or without maps but the way I look at it, if the demand is there and they do ultimately end up being considered, it would be ideal to implement them in a way that coincides with the game tenets and overall emphasis on exploration, social interaction, player driven economy, etc.

Cool, I'll have a look! Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Don't really care if they're in game or not. If they are in game, I hope the system is done well. Personally, I try not to rely on maps, and I think GPS is cheesy.

@Kaen -- I proposed a cartography system on page 8 if you care to take a look. It's very similar to what you and AevicNij have described. It isn't completely fleshed out but there is enough of a base there to build off of. I can live with or without maps but the way I look at it, if the demand is there and they do ultimately end up being considered, it would be ideal to implement them in a way that coincides with the game tenets and overall emphasis on exploration, social interaction, player driven economy, etc.

Yeah Ad I like your ideas, and like you predicted I'm not 100% sold on the Emblems portion, but still I like it. I think perhaps from familiarity/nostalgia alone (or perhaps old games just hit a winning formula on the first pitch) I would still prefer the blank maps that your character automatically maps out as you go about adventuring. Maybe you would have to equip the map in your offhand and pencils in your main hand for the sketching to begin, reducing your run speed to walk or whatever, but something that translates your actual character actually taking what he/she sees and representing it on the parchment as you go. I like your idea of the inherent marketsink to maps deteriorating based on the skill/materials, but I still think I would prefer a better translation of advanced skill be more intricately detailed maps, from LDoN style basic lines and nothing else all the way up to beautiful caligraphy and artistic sketches representing land features, landmarks, points of interest etc. Perhaps the quality of the artwork/lines/features on the map could be tied to the skill, and the duration of the inks be tied to the materials exactly as you laid out. But if I'm being completely honest, the more I read about this the more I actually want to get colored pencils, a sketch pad and a pad of graph paper to do it all for real myself again like the old days. I wouldn't be as accurate without /loc but I honestly would rather there not even be a /loc feature to assist in mapping out how many meters this way or that way etc. ;-)

As with most ideas I was going for a maximum bang for minimum buck approach. If all options are on the table I think the idea could be expanded upon greatly and utilize higher detail with the caligraphy and sketches just like you propose. I really love the idea of this being a real crafting profession ... it would change the crafting game forever as far as I am concerned. Tying crafting into adventure and exploration is a winning recipe IMO. The main hurdle, I think, is adding value to the profession that can't otherwise be appreciated by window-tabbers. The more ways you overcome that, the more meaningful the profession would be. I'm glad you like the idea! As I mentioned earlier in the thread, a system like this could be considered as a possibility. Feedback during testing is going to determine a lot.

Cartography has been discussed for years within the Pantheon community. I would venture to say that the majority of players don't want to see the traditional "Press M and a fully drawn out map opens up" kind of experience. Furthermore, GPS indicators are basically viewed as the plague. When you combine both of them, a lot of players end up opening their maps and focusing on a little dot that represents their character in the world while they travel or adventure, and will do this for extended periods of time. Doing so takes away from the beauty, luster, and sense of exploration from the world itself and causes serious issues with the "It's about the journey, not the destination" argument. I think a fog of war mechanic could be really beneficial for both map-makers, and map-users. If a cartographer wants to create a map, they must be physically present in the area they are trying to record. For players that purchase maps, they would start off as a basic shell -- only after exploring an area will the fog of war dissipate and finer details start to emerge on the parchment.

There is plenty of merit in the idea that having the ability to create player-made maps would be good for immersion, social interaction, commerce, and achievement. Cartography would be a great crafting profession for explorer types as it would allow them to enjoy a sense of progression that is tied into their preferred playstyle. After doing some research on the Bartle Study ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types ) it would seem to me that cartography could be enjoyable for most player types. Explorers seem like the natural fit, but as an Achiever, I must admit that a feature like this would be really appealing to me as well. Socializers could also benefit from a variety of cartography-induced scenarios. Whether it's assisting another player who is making a map or trying to communicate an interpretation of a map in their possession to friends, there are ample opportunities for social interaction. Due to the nature of how player-made maps could work, bartering would also be commonplace.

I would like to propose a rough outline of how this feature could work. Feel free to respond with any observations/comments/feedback.

Parchment (If ink fades, you can return to your cartographer for recoloring)

Crude Paper would deteriorate after 30 days. Only black/green/brown/blue inks are compatible.

Standard Paper would deteriorate after 60 days. Only black/green/brown/blue inks are compatible.

Crude Parchment would deteriorate after 90 days. All inks are compatible, but red/grey inks will fade. (Weather can expedite fading)

Standard Parchment would deteriorate after 120 days. All inks are compatible, but red/grey inks will fade. (Weather can expedite fading)

Vellum would be permanent. All inks are compatible, but red/grey inks will fade. (Weather can expedite fading)

Uterine Vellum would be permanent. All inks are compatible, and will never fade.

Codex (These would be rare drops from the world loot table and players are free to affix them to their maps as they see fit)

Basic codex would slow down deterioration and any ink fading by 25%

Quality codex would slow down deterioration and any ink fading by 50%

High Quality codex would eliminate deterioration and slow down any fading by 75%

That's about it for now. I'm not trying to propose a fully fleshed out cartography system, just wanted to get a conversation going. I know some folks will probably cringe as soon as they see the emblem explanations and that's okay. I think it's important to realize that all of these things will exist on 3'rd party websites anyway. If cartography is going to be a meaningful profession, crafters should be able to compete with the world wide web. I am particularly interested in ideas that could offer them any sort of value that could earn the business of folks who would otherwise be a window tabber as I feel this is the biggest obstacle in making a profession like this work. Maybe cartographers could trade their emblems to other players (they become no-trade at that point), allowing consumers to mark down their own POI's or references as they see fit. I'm sure there are plenty of potential conflicts that can be found in this post ... feel free to critique, but kudos to anybody who contributes any feedback or ideas that could improve or expand upon what is here.

I like it! However, the highlighted area would be my main concern. For that reason, I'm iffy about anything deteriorating or fading. I would also want to see some other factors that make this a valuable skill.

For example: Tie Cartography into the perception system. Players with a high skill in both might be able to see "glowing" areas when traveling through the world or working through a dungeon. These areas could essentially be treasure chests that can be unearthed. Perhaps, like in UO, monsters could burst forth from this area (if it's engaged by the Cartographer) when the chest is revealed.

Or, like I mentioned, perhaps they can create "Magical" maps that reveal an area where there's treasure (buried treasure chest). The map itself could be linked with a type of mob, or one particular mob. Then, if the player holding the map (in their inventory) kills the correct mob, a treasure chest spawns and the map is consumed. I can see some people making lots of maps of raid zones and high level zones in hopes of getting a T-map for that zone that they can hunt down with their buddies / group / raid. Because maps would be expensive to make, and the T-maps would be rare creations, I see the risk/reward being pretty balanced.

I think tying something like that to Cartography would make it a much more interesting and desirable profession. Making some money from selling their maps and such (for other people to fill their map books or what have you) would almost seem like a side-perk.

I like it! However, the highlighted area would be my main concern. For that reason, I'm iffy about anything deteriorating or fading. I would also want to see some other factors that make this a valuable skill.

For example: Tie Cartography into the perception system. Players with a high skill in both might be able to see "glowing" areas when traveling through the world or working through a dungeon. These areas could essentially be treasure chests that can be unearthed. Perhaps, like in UO, monsters could burst forth from this area (if it's engaged by the Cartographer) when the chest is revealed.

Or, like I mentioned, perhaps they can create "Magical" maps that reveal an area where there's treasure (buried treasure chest). The map itself could be linked with a type of mob, or one particular mob. Then, if the player holding the map (in their inventory) kills the correct mob, a treasure chest spawns and the map is consumed. I can see some people making lots of maps of raid zones and high level zones in hopes of getting a T-map for that zone that they can hunt down with their buddies / group / raid. Because maps would be expensive to make, and the T-maps would be rare creations, I see the risk/reward being pretty balanced.

I think tying something like that to Cartography would make it a much more interesting and desirable profession. Making some money from selling their maps and such (for other people to fill their map books or what have you) would almost seem like a side-perk.

Making treasure maps as a cool RNG perk/bonus could make sense if it was tied to something in the game that made sense, like the Perception skill somehow like you suggested. Maybe you could talk to travelling merchants or adventurers, or just locals in an area, and based on your perception skill you could maybe get a "map notes" scroll you purchase or your character makes after the NPC interaction, that you could then use with the other materials when creating the local map. Or maybe you could augment an already made map of an area with one of these "notes" consumables, maybe with a chance of ruining the map but also with a chance of adding a POI/treasure. Old Man McWhatever looks at your map and grumbles, "Well I think I saw that filthy kobold digging around here." as he points to a spot on your map. You hand over a few gold coins to verify. "Yeah, yeah that seems about right." he confirms.

Making treasure maps as a cool RNG perk/bonus could make sense if it was tied to something in the game that made sense, like the Perception skill somehow like you suggested. Maybe you could talk to travelling merchants or adventurers, or just locals in an area, and based on your perception skill you could maybe get a "map notes" scroll you purchase or your character makes after the NPC interaction, that you could then use with the other materials when creating the local map. Or maybe you could augment an already made map of an area with one of these "notes" consumables, maybe with a chance of ruining the map but also with a chance of adding a POI/treasure. Old Man McWhatever looks at your map and grumbles, "Well I think I saw that filthy kobold digging around here." as he points to a spot on your map. You hand over a few gold coins to verify. "Yeah, yeah that seems about right." he confirms.

I think map PARTs colored and outlined for rewards for some quest... Not real sure of the "zone" layout. But if we go in the way back machine to commonlands. Maybe doing a small quest for a patrolling fairs in the area he would give you a small section of the eastern part of the CL zone showing an unidentified cave " Befallen ".
Maybe the same with a trader traveler could show you a hill area in Rathe mountains with a vally leading to a lake.
Could collect many of these parts and have a full map. Not showing your exact location but some land marks.
I think that would be pretty interesting map collection quest. Throw some lore into it.... Like this area with ruins that no one knows why they are there.